Friday, October 15, 2010

The third issue of &Review is live online and on its way out into the world as a free newsprint publication. As with No.2, I have another poem in this issue (or an excerpt of a poem). All I'd like to say, here, is that it's better than the other one, though it's got similar tropes and preoccupations that should be transparent to anybody I know and anybody who knows me. Though, I don't know, maybe some people who don't know me will know something about me. (The word "meme" is funny, right?) In any case, it's a little stanza and its title is a word I happened to learn by accident but now adore. From wikitionary:

(botany) The first bud, or gemmule, of a young plant; the bud, or growing point, of the embryo, above the cotyledons.

(zoology) A down feather.

(zoology) The aftershaft of a feather.

(zoology) One of the featherlike scales of certain male butterflies.

Quite a beautiful, multivalent idea to live up to! But if I don't do it justice in this sample perhaps I will elsewhere. Failing that, you can revert to the alternate title "I never meant to make a fist." Also, of course, there's a whole boatload of other words and images, some by some other friends of mine, that Mia and Rachel have curated into a typically handsome package. You can download a pdf of the print version by clicking here or you can peruse the online edition by clicking here. You will also be able to find it in a few spots around Portland, and I imagine New York, and maybe even San Francisco with the right push. You can find out specifics here.SATURDAY UPDATE: It came to my attention last night, while working on a crossword at the bar with this joker, that this issue's publication has hit a stall. Mia informs me there was an editing gaffe that necessitates some more work. As I learn more, I'll say more. But, hey, you can still look at the pdf and the images assembled.

We Live

I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.— Joan Didion